Iconic London

 “Iconic London” is what the included tour was called today. It was a long tour - five hours! - but that was mostly because of traffic and distance. We’re in port in Tilbury, about a half hour or so east of London on the River Thames.

We got on the bus and saw a whole bunch of nothing between the ship and London. A few towns, a dead Ford Motors plant, some shopping centres. Eventually, we got into London and the sights improved greatly. The first thing was passed of note was the Tower of London.

We didn’t get out to visit the Tower, but I had visited it and took the tour on a previous visit in 2005. It was interesting and I enjoyed going back through the photos I took then, especially this one of a cute guard there.

But I digress. London has lots of interesting architecture, both new and old. One of the newer buildings is “The Shard” - it’s a vertical city, with shops on the lower floors, a hotel and restaurants above that, then offices, and finally apartments in the upper portion. The architect waived his fee for designing the building on the condition that he be given one of the apartments. He kept the apartment for a couple years, then sold it… for £45million.

We crossed the Tower Bridge, which lots of people mistakenly call “London Bridge”.

Then it was off to St Paul’s Cathedral, where we were able to get off the bus and walk around. I’d seen St Paul’s from a distance before, but you need to get up close to appreciate the massive scale of this thing. It towers over the neighbouring buildings.

Because it appears to only have two floors plus the dome, it belies its height of 36 storeys - a full 111 m (365ft) tall.

It really was impressive.

We did eventually get to Westminster Abbey, Parliament, and Big Ben’s tower (Big Ben is the bell inside the tower), but the bus was so close, it was nearly impossible to get a shot. Here’s one I took in 2005:

On that trip, I attended a choir concert at Westminster Abbey, done in the same way music had been performed when Handel and Purcell and others were choirmasters there: men sang tenor and bass, while boys sang soprano and alto. No instruments, no microphones, and they sang music that was composed for that space. It was fantastic. This was me with a bobby who was standing guard outside.

Wooooo, I’ve aged a lot since then. Being married will do that to you, I suppose. (Just kidding)

A bit later, we got a good look at the London Eye.

Then our driver found a place to park the bus so we could walk around the block to see Buckingham Palace. You can’t drive anywhere near it right now, because all kinds of things are blocked off in preparation for the coronation of His Majesty King Charles III in a few days. Grandstands are up already.

Buckingham Palace was right across the street from the grandstands. The Royal Standard of KC3 was flying, so we know he was home.

…but alas, he didn’t come out to say hello. Might’ve been the drizzle that had just started.

We did a bit more driving around, then it was back to Tilbury and the ship, where we had a nice meal and watched the sunset.